Near-Infrared Fluorescence Guided Robotic Pulmonary Segmentectomy for Early Stage Lung Cancer

In the researchers' words

Lungs are made up of individual lobes. When a lung cancer tumour is detected in one of these lobes, surgeons typically perform a Lobectomy. A Lobectomy is the surgery most commonly done to treat early-stage lung cancer and requires removal of an entire lobe of the lung, which removes a large amount of lung tissue For patients with small tumours saving as much healthy lung tissue as possible is important. Each lobe of the lung has smaller sections called segments. When a lung cancer is in one of these segments, it is possible to remove that segment, without removing the entire lobe. This surgery is called a segmentectomy. Compared to a lobectomy, a segmentectomy saves a larger amount of healthy lung tissue. With the advances in screening technology for lung cancer tumours, an increasing amount of very small lung cancer tumours are being found, and the demand for segmentectomy is increasing. A segmentectomy is a hard surgery to perform robotically because it is difficult to view the tissue lines that separate each segment within the lobe. As a result, it is difficult for the surgeon to see exactly which pieces of tissue should be removed. Because of these challenges, many patients having robotic surgery will have a lobectomy, even if a full lobectomy is not needed. Near-Infrared Fluorescence (NIF) using indocyanine green (ICG) fluorescent dye is a recent advancement in the…